


It's Not a Competition

by QuailiTea



Series: Nerds of a Feather [2]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Flirting, Bar Room Brawl, Build A Bear, F/M, First Dates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 04:59:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16422854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuailiTea/pseuds/QuailiTea
Summary: Three first dates. One pair is shy, one pair is stubborn, and one pair is going to start a bar fight. Guess which!Also, happy birthday Inzannatea!





	It's Not a Competition

Kissing Miss Fisher, Jack reasoned to himself, _ex post facto,_ wasn’t the worst idea he could have had. It ranked above, say, being caught with his hand in his boss’s daughter’s shirt at the company Christmas party after too many aviator cocktails (being married to said daughter at the time notwithstanding), or walking into a Chinese brothel thinking it really, truly was a massage parlor, or climbing into the reptile house display of boa constrictors on a drunken fraternity pledge. But… it still hadn’t been the best idea. For starters, she happened to be his co-worker, or at least, someone that he still had to see and work with. Secondly, she was incredibly attractive. He’d been haunted (though haunted was a more negative term than truly necessary) by the image of those garters she wore since the day they’d gotten caught in the rain and mud on a sprint through an unfinished parking lot to her vehicle, and instead of just allowing herself to be tangled in her skirt like a normal person, she’d dragged the thing off, slung it over her shoulder, and smirked. “Try to keep up, Inspector,” she’d said, while he did his level best to put his brain back in gear and not stare at her arse. Thirdly, not only did he see her, and butt heads with her, nearly every third day at work, they had also, somehow, become complicit in playing Cupid for both Hugh and Dot and also Mac and Rosie.

They were stupidly competitive, Jack knew. From their first meeting at a pub quiz night, to their second in the boardroom the next day, to nearly every third day in the office after that, she had been spoiling to match wits, and he had been shockingly eager to oblige. It was never a fight, which had been the first refreshing change. She was always willing to admit when his ideas went over better than hers, so long as he showed her the same courtesy. He found himself on her side even when he meant to be fully impartial, simply because he knew that she wouldn’t take it as a _quid pro quo_ the way a lot of salespeople did. But she did exult whenever she managed to win over another department head to her line of thinking and deployed Dot Williams down to start befriending the RNs and teaching them the new line-entry processes. Those were the nights he, Collins, and Rosie usually won at trivia, especially if Dot came late. Even Phryne Fisher in all her perfectly-coiffed and sophisticated glamour couldn’t quite do the thinking for two people when she was a couple of whiskey sours in. It had been one of those nights that the whole thing started.

There had been a bet, originally between her and Mac, as to whether or not Collins was going to ask Ms. Williams out. Phryne said yes, that he just needed a little encouragement. Mac had rolled her eyes and declared that Hugh Collins was a cinnamon roll who would sooner face down a roomful of Slavic revolutionaries wielding machine guns _(“That’s…oddly specific, Mac” “I’m a doctor, I don’t deal in generalities”)_ than asking a girl as wholesomely competent as Dot for her phone number. Rosie, while agreeing that he was definitely not a complete loss, as far as men went _(“No offense, Jack” “None taken”)_ , sided with Mac. Phryne had appealed to Jack for reinforcements.

“Ms. Williams could make her own feelings known, if that’s the score,” Jack said, trying for the third option. “But I’m sure he’ll ask her in time. Eventually.”

“We don’t have time for ‘eventually,’ Inspector,” Miss Fisher scoffed. “The SCM Gala is in three weeks, and she needs to buy a dress.”

“Let’s say by next week’s end,” Mac said. “And if he doesn’t, which he won’t, you and the Inspector will buy the lovebirds, Rosie, and I, dinner, and help the process along.” Rosie nodded approvingly, and at her relaxed face, Jack felt a small knot come loose in his chest. It had been a rough few weeks for his ex-wife. He was glad she seemed to be bouncing back. Miss Fisher glowered at Mac, then shot him a conspiratorial look as she heard Dot calling for them over the noise. She had apparently encountered Hugh near the loos, and from the looks of things, he had managed to talk about everything except the possibility of her accompanying him anywhere, or at least anywhere other than to the table with a round of appetizers between them. Dot’s disappointed face was evident to everyone, and Mac smiled a hair too knowingly at Rosie, who said merely: “Somewhere with a good range on tap, I think.” As Dot and Hugh passed out calamari and chips in gravy, Jack followed the crook of Miss Fisher’s finger.

“Mac has expensive tastes, Jack,” she warned as he leaned in. “And she will make us follow through. We made a bet when I was eight and I’m still not allowed to borrow any of her tweeds without written permission.”

“So, you want me to, what, give him a ‘buck up chum, it’s just a dance, not a proposal of marriage’ speech?”

“Do you think it would work?”

“I’m his boss; that’s rather throwing my weight around a little too fervently, don’t you think?” Miss Fisher leaned back against the rickety chair, taking in their little squad. Dot, looking doe-eyed at Hugh as she passed him a tiny plate. Hugh’s slicked blond hair glistening under the pendant lights as if he’d just taken a shower, fumbling the chips and nearly dropping them on his quiz card. Mac was tipping back her chair, twirling a pencil between her fingers as she waited for their next round to begin, and Rosie was reciting to herself from a list the doctor had scrawled out for her – something about chemistry and how to vulcanize rubber. And Jack, next to Phryne, watching her watch them. A curious expression crossed her face – surprise? Possessiveness? She turned to him sharply, and he became unaccountably curious. But whatever it was she needed to tell him, it was apparently going to have to wait.

“We’ll talk later,” she said, and proceeded to wipe the floor with him in the next round of trivia.

\---

Later turned out to be the following Tuesday, which had begun on a hideous downward trajectory. Jack had left his swipe card in the car, then dropped it on the floor while going through security, then realized only too late that the binder he needed for his first meeting of the day had been the thing he had set on top of his car while he dug between the seats looking for the swipe card. That had entailed another trip back through the building, only to get caught between shift changes for the security, making him late for his meeting. Now, the only thing he could think of that could make the headache he had brewing grow more intense was…

“Miss Fisher,” he sighed, seeing her swan out of the elevator and down the hall to his office. When he entered, she had already hung up her coat on the coat hook over his door and taken a seat on his desk (why couldn’t the woman sit in a chair like a normal person?).

“Oh, Jack, excellent, you’re here,” she said, beaming from beneath an absurdly fashionable hat. It clung close to her head: blue felt with an exuberant cluster of black and peacock-patterned feathers tucked into the aqua ribbon around it. The rest of her outfit was a perfectly tailored, perfectly white suit, all the better to showcase said hat.

“Do you code in those things, or just wear them specifically to shed feathers all over my office?”

“You have a power tie, I have a power hat. It’s not my fault that women have better options in sartorial confidence.” She had fished a wireless mouse from somewhere and was now using it on top of something that was probably important.

“I can’t think of a person who needs less help in that department than you.”

“You are in a mood,” she said. “Well, this should cheer you up.” She flipped her laptop around and clicked her way through a few screens. “I found the problem we were chasing last night. There was a pointer set to an old version of the screen in the database. The new version is filtered. I just had to pop in and clone it to check.” Jack nodded, mostly understanding her, but was distracted when she took a bite of something in her hand that looked suspiciously like the breakfast he had just purchased from the vending machine.

“Is that my energy bar?”

“Possibly.” She took another delicate nibble.

“Would you like a drink of my tea too?”

“Oh no, I’d leave incriminating lipstick everywhere. And mine’s just back at my desk.”

“I wasn’t aware you had your own space here,” he rolled his eyes. “Considering how often you invade mine.”

“I’m not really a cubicle person,” she replied. “And the view in here is simply marvelous.” She deadpanned the last sentence, but Jack felt fairly sure the innuendo was drifting down the hall in a physical cloud at this point. “You wouldn’t happen to have anything else, would you? That appalling machine ate my dollar.”

“I… might have something in that far drawer over there.” He gestured vaguely, still trying parse out the spiderous mass of code she had created to find the issue that had ground the department’s upgrade to a halt. “Are you sure this solves the whole defect? We’re not going to be missing any records, we’re not going to have to change anything manually?”

“It solves the missing records issue, and,” she added, emerging from his snack drawer with a biscuit between her teeth and two more in her hand, “I also found why we were duplicating records from that secondary database.” Jack shook his head, disbelieving. “Someone at one of the storage locations has been doing some manual adjustments of his own. If I were you, I might drop a word to the foreman out there to take a closer look at the inventory.”

“So, you fixed our database issue, streamlined our process, and possibly detected fraud at a plant in Adelaide,” Jack said, trying to keep the astonishment from his voice. “All last night. Do you ever sleep?”

“Only when I’m not alone,” she said, flickering her eyelashes, and collected her laptop from him. “See you at the mapping meeting.” And she was off again, leaving behind a few feathers on his desk and an unaccountable desire in him for 3pm to hurry up and happen.

\---

He should have known better. She knew damn well he liked that hat.

Miss Fisher had hijacked his mapping meeting when she strode in, a few chicken feathers fluttering to the worn carpet like confetti as she neatly cut through some complicated argument between Angie and Reg about how exactly they were going to transfer budgeting amounts to the new system without tying it to inventory. “All I’m saying, Reg, is that if we do it your way, some poor RN or purchaser or whatever out there is going to have to try and enter the number of laproscopes he needs and come up with an allowance of two and a half. And then the system will try to order him half a laproscope, and fire, flames, eternal damnation, and paperwork will ensue.” Angie pathologically hated paperwork, almost more than Jack did.

“And besides,” Miss Fisher said as she waltzed through the door and stole Jack’s seat, “it would require more coding and an investigation into that mystery server on the fourth floor to change the entire setup for that piece. And Reg is desperate to get rid of me.” The last sentence was spoken _sotto voce_ , as if it were a self-deprecating aside to the brunette with the braid next to her. But the look that accompanied it was hard and sharp and brooked no argument, unless you were a fool. And Reg was only a little bit foolish.

“I thought you were in sales, that’s all,” he said. “Didn’t expect to have the saleslady also be the one optimizing our transfer.”

“I don’t sell anything I don’t believe in,” she grinned. Rather like a fox grinned at a rabbit it was about to eat, Jack thought. “But if you’d prefer I leave things as they stand and leave the support half of our job unfinished…” Reg blanched, and his hands rose in surrender almost of their own accord.

A short interlude of extreme technical jargon ensued, at the end of which, Phryne had commandeered not only the meeting, but also his power point, Reg’s chair, and Angie’s undying loyalty. When they broke to give up the room to someone else, Angie stormed off to investigate the mystery server, with a look in her eye like that of Joan of Arc facing down a very stupid Englishman. Reg might have evaporated. Jack wasn’t entirely sure. Miss Fisher finally finished her pottering about in the room and gave him a friendly shoulder bump.

“Walk with me back to our room,” she said. “I need to be in there when Angie brings that mystery PC in. I think I may have inspired her a little too fervently.”

“You appealed to her sense of curiosity,” Jack explained. “And her desire to avoid filling out any more service request forms.”

“I did, didn’t I,” she replied, and there was a soft smile of satisfaction on her face. “I do like when I can inject a little fighting spirit into someone, even if they are only doing battle with inefficiency. Talking of which…”

“I smell an oncoming request,” he said, his natural reticence fighting with the growing trust he had for her. Miss Fisher was a maniac, but she generally made allowances for his more sedate temperament.

“What would you say to persuading Rosie into going out with Mac for a date?” Jack goggled at her. Set up his ex-wife? Set her up with the mildly-terrifying Dr. MacMillan? Had she lost the plot? They were already involved in one scheme of Emma-like matchmaking, why would they want to embark on another?

“Oh, don’t be like that, Inspector,” she said, and he realized she was misinterpreting his silence. “I have carte blanche as her wingwoman to suggest dates, and she’s interested, I know. She would never have given out a veritable study guide to Rosie otherwise. I know Mac isn’t the most cuddly of people, but she’s true as steel and almost as competitive as I am.”

“No, no, it’s not that,” he struggled to explain. “Rosie… Rosie is having a tough time right now. She blames herself, for Sydnee, I mean.” He shook his head, and his usually dour face grew more grave. “Though what that woman did in collusion with Rosie’s father is squarely on both their shoulders, I don’t know that Rosie sees it that way. I’m not sure she’d agree to any date, even one with Dr. MacMillan.”

“Surely she doesn’t think it’s her own fault that her partner decided being paid by Sanderson to go away was better than being with Rosie?”

“Rosie was raised by her father, and that’s made her clear-sighted, but also with some very black-and-white thinking,” Jack sighed. He leaned against the doorframe and his eyes focused distantly. “We fought for our marriage for a long while, even after she came out. But it turns out I’m not as liberal-minded as I’d like to be.” He gave a wry smile at her nod of understanding. “I don't like to break my word, and that's about as broken as it's ever been. Rosie’s still got the stronger self-recriminating streak, though it’s a close-run thing.”

“So, you don’t think she’d be interested?”

“I know she is, actually,” he said, still holding up the wall. He watched the little flash of surprise in Phryne’s eyes and suppressed a smirk. “She has a bad case of mentionitis about Mac, and I even caught her watching for redheads in white coats the other day.”

“In that case, it sounds like Rosie needs a doctor,” Miss Fisher snarked.

“I do warn you, she’ll be the worst patient ever. She’s possibly more stubborn than Mac.”

“We can only try,” she said. “And anyway, if Mac starts dating your team captain, it will give us an advantage on quiz nights, I should think.”

“Ulterior motives then?”

“Always, Jack.” The click of her throat as she spoke his name, her eyes sparkling with intelligence and confidence, made him more vulnerable to her requests than he would ever admit. That and that damn hat.

“Fine,” he said. “I will _suggest_ the idea to Rosie. But I refuse to meddle. And that goes for Collins too.”

“Oh,” she smirked, “I have a plan for that. Don’t keep him too late tomorrow; I’m going to lure him down to the boardwalk and then we’ll see what happens when he encounters Dot at loose ends. I plan to be lurking round the corner.”

“You make it sound like he’s going to need a police escort.”

“Oh, were you offering to come too, Inspector? What an excellent plan.” Jack rolled his eyes.

\---

Phryne watched unobtrusively as Hugh and Dot meandered their way down the sidewalk. Many of the shops were starting to close up, but the one that she suspected Hugh to be aiming for still had gleaming lights in the windows.

“Did Collins happen to say where he was going?” Jack had suddenly materialized behind her, but she didn’t turn a hair. “Hope I didn’t startle you,” he added.

“Not at all Inspector, your cologne gave me the alert,” she replied. Her eyes were still fixed on the gently drifting couple. “You should wear less next time.” Jack’s face went through several stages of expression at that comment, but he said nothing. “I might have made a few suggestions to Hugh, but I suppose it’s up to him where they go.”

“Which is to say, you dropped enough hints to sink a small fishing vessel, and he finally took one,” Jack said wryly. “I’m glad Dot is on board with this plan. Is that… Build-a-Bear?”

“Why, so it is,” she said, utterly smug. “What a lovely idea. Well done Hugh.” The pair watched as Dot clapped her hands in glee over the display in the window, and Hugh opened the door for her with a gentlemanly air.

When they had both disappeared, Miss Fisher turned back to Jack with mischief in her eyes. “Now, I would never pry—”

“Yes, you would,” Jack replied. “And to prevent you from giving into the temptation of texting her for updates to see if you win your bet, I suppose I had better suggest something else for you to do.”

“Just me?” He held out his arm. “Or perhaps us both? I do happen to know they do a very entertaining karaoke night in that pub just over there.” She pointed carelessly at the gleaming lights, and Jack’s lips thinned in recognition. He knew the name Blue Pelican – any number of his staff members had mentioned it around the office. Usually in the context of some ridiculous drunken escapade that could only be dreamt up by college interns who thought they were invincible. Not a nice place, but an exciting one. Of course she knew about this place. “We could make a wager? Whoever does the better karaoke rendition, the other breaks the date idea to Mac and Rosie.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’ve been had?” He shook his head, but the weight of her arm on his buoyed him unaccountably. Maybe she was right. Maybe he had been throwing himself into work a little too much lately. Maybe. But if she thought that taking him out for a drink was all it took to get him belting out Pirates of Penzance or some such, she was going to be sorely mistaken.

Miss Fisher was not as sorely mistaken as Jack expected her to be. It had taken three drinks before he was even close to willing to walk to the front of the pub and take up that microphone, but rise to the challenge he did. He was halfway through the patter portion of Odds Are before his brain caught up with the words that he was singing. “Somewhere in the world someone is gonna fall in love by the end of this song,” and he made the mistake of looking her dead in the eye. It was like waving the proverbial red cape in front of the bull. No sooner had he set down the microphone to an enthusiastic round of applause when he was all but bowled over, and she was picking out her own song with a devious look on her face.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she purred, and he had to suppress a sudden crescendo of heat that started in his cheeks and his groin simultaneously. “Please thank my opening act.” There was a ripple of laughter. “But now it’s time for something a little different.” The music was already running, fingersnaps and upright bass notes in a pulsing rhythm that only registered as an actual song when she began to croon in a voice that could have been coming from decades past. It put him in mind of smoky cabarets, bathtub gin, fast cars and illicit meetings. “Fever (fever when you kiss me), fever when you hold me tight,” she sang. She looked into the crowd at the bar as if they had all paid to come see her, only glancing back at him through her lashes for a moment. But that glance…

_Oh damn._

Jack’s mind began to race. Half of it was putting every brake at its disposal into stopping him from actively drooling. The other half scanned the playlist, looking for a return salvo that would knock her off balance. He couldn’t match her raw sex appeal, that was patently obvious. But maybe something a little more sentimental? She finished her song, and sat back down next to him nursing her gin. “Good for the throat,” she quipped. Jack merely looked at her, and she gave the subtlest of nods. She knew full well what game they were playing now.

Jack’s turn came around again after several pickled idiots in turn pretending they were on American Idol and one surprisingly talented group of women belting out The Proclaimers’ 500 Miles. “Yeah, bring back the bloke with the pipes,” cheered the last of them as she got down off the stage. He stood, and there were a few more drunken cheers. He had loosened his necktie at some point, but kept the jacket on.

“John Legend?” he said, keeping his voice mild. There were cheers, and he acknowledged them with a mischievous half-smile. “Sure, why not.” It was going to be tricky. The range was a stretch. But he couldn’t let her walk away with the victory. Plus, if he did, he was going to have to come up with a date for Rosie to go on, and he frankly didn’t have any idea how even to start with that. Nothing for it. “All of Me it is,” and he punched the button and began to sing. No quarter. Miss Fisher was going to be the one planning that date.

\---

Some time later, Hugh and Dot walked into the pub, looked around, and saw both of their respective bosses duetting “Anything You Can Do,” in front of a crowd that was rowdily egging them on.

“I have a pretty good idea of how Miss Phryne wound up up there,” Dot said, shocked, “but is that really the Inspector too? How does that happen?”

“Splash damage from flirting,” Hugh remarked soberly. “His Charisma stat is almost as high as hers, although I’m sure he’d disagree.” He caught himself and turned to explain. “Sorry, I mean, it’s just a roleplaying game that I…”

“Hugh,” Dot laughed, “next you’ll be telling me I need to stop using INT as a dump stat when I play my tiefling bard.”

“You play DnD?” He gasped, but Dot merely elbowed him in the ribs.

“Girls can play too, don’t be sexist.” She hugged her bear to her chest and sniffed the cotton-candy scent. “Even girls who like fluffy plush bears with pink hearts in their ears, right Gwilym?” Gwilym squeaked. “But I think maybe we should find a different pub.”

Hugh watched for another long moment as his boss locked eyes with Miss Fisher over the microphone down the bar, not realizing that at least four men were giving him the stinkeye for having her attention. “Yeah, I think that’s probably a good idea. This crowd is getting noisy.” And, sure enough, even as they backed slowly toward the door, there was a crash of glassware on the floor and a particularly vulgar shout. “Let’s get you back to your hotel, Dottie.”

A shout went up from somewhere down the bar – two women had gotten into a screaming match, and someone’s drink had wound up in someone else’s designer handbag. It was like watching a dominance display in the zoo. First the two women, then the two men who were with them, posturing and shouting. Karaoke was temporarily forgotten. Phryne stood up, ready to wade in, and Jack put out a hand to stop her, which instead contacted one of the bouncers who was coming from the other doorway to assess the situation. The man was built like a railgun-mounted tank, so that didn’t exactly hurt him, but he whirled around, saw the next-nearest sozzled patron, and hoisted that bloke up by the collar to shout at him. That, in turn, drew the ire of the man’s friends, who rounded on the bouncer, calling him all manner of uncreative profanities. “I think we might need to leave after the next one, unless you feel like trying to arrest someone,” she shouted. But that was the wrong thing to say.

One of the women nearest her heard the word and began shrieking at her date that she was going to have: “...that lady cop arrest you, and the bloke with her take me home and do me up the right way, you turnip-dicked herniated sheep wart!” The sheep wart took offense to that and snarled, lurching around to figure out which was the lady cop. Jack all but saw his life flash before his eyes as Phryne dropped into a judo stance, and he knew he had about three split seconds before the sheep wart went over the bar into the mirror and he was going to be explaining to his boss why their best data transfer specialist contractor had been arrested for affray while drinking with him in a pub. In that instant, he did the only thing he could think of under the circumstances. He kissed her, hard enough and long enough to wake up the small, treacherous part of his brain that began to suggest that perhaps just pulling her into the coat room would have been plenty distraction enough. He told that part of his brain to stick a sock in it. The angry bloke, lost for words, was thrown into a choke hold by the tank-bouncer, and tossed through the front door. The bar fight passed them by. He hadn’t stopped kissing her. Or maybe she had just started kissing him. She giggled into his mouth and he felt a tremor of excitement shoot down his shoulders and into the hands that were buried in her hair.

 _Oh Damn._

There was a slap as he dropped some bills on the bar and then she had seized him by the lapels and dragged him outside with a few stumbles here and there. When the cool of the night hit the back of his head, he realized she’d somehow collected his hat and her bag without actually disrupting their embrace. Weirdly impressive. She said nothing when she broke away. Only gave him that same adrenaline-junkie grin, grabbed his hand, and pulled him off toward the waterfront. They landed on a bench under a flickering streetlight, both chests heaving, both pairs of eyes alight. “So,” he said, after he caught his breath. “Who won that one?”

“I have… legitimately no idea. I had forgotten about that for a moment." She paused and looked at him. “Are we going to talk about your distraction techniques?”

“All in the line of duty, Miss Fisher,” he said levelly. The enormity of what he had just done was beginning to dawn on him, and he scrambled desperately to find an even keel.

“You are full of surprises, Inspector.”

“Are you alright?” She put one hand gingerly to the back of her head.

“Just a little thump when we hit the doorframe.” They sat in silence for a long while, before he took a deep breath. Over the top, then. It wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever had, and he was four drinks in on the night.

"I don't think that should happen again," he declared. "I took advantage, and it was deeply unethical of me." He wilted at her scorn, even as he pushed the words out. "And really enjoyable too." 

"Oh yes, you definitely took advantage," she scowled at him. "And your technique was far too rushed. You should spend a little extra effort next time."

“You kissed me back, you know,” he said, nettled.

“Do you want me to apologize?”

“I…” He leaned forward. “I meant to do the honorable thing. Not treat you like a damsel to be rescued. I know you can take care of yourself, I wanted to have your back.”

“You always do,” she murmured. “And I don’t mind the occasional attack of chivalry.” She stood, and turned, so the lamplight lit her from behind, haloing her in silver. She held out a hand, and tentatively, he took it. “I take life at a fast clip, Jack.” He rose, standing so close he could see the glint of each individual bead on her necklace. Her hand was warm in his. “If you need a little more time to put your ideas in order, I won’t be pining away.”

“Nobody who has ever met you would accuse you of pining for any reason.” He took a deep, lingering breath, enjoying the scent of her perfume for a little while longer. “Don’t postpone anything for me,” he said. “But if you wanted to try persuading the head of Gastroenterology that he needs to make a software changeover, I wouldn’t mind.”

“Call it a tie then?”

“Call it a tie.” They shook on it, and decided that a tie meant a joint effort at date persuasion, then carefully poured Jack into a cab. As he leaned his head against the cool of the window, he found himself humming softly. "You look so beautiful in that dress, your silhouette over me," as the streetlights flickered by and he twined a strand of black hair over and around his fingers.

\---

Thursday trivia was a whole different sort of interesting. Mac, canny as a magpie, was having none of her friend's nonsense about possibly taking out a quiz opponent on a date. Her face had gone sarcastic, and only the fact that Miss Fisher was Miss Fisher and that Jack could see the sudden dart of hope in Rosie's eyes gave him enough courage to persist. When he and Miss Fisher had suggested she and Mac take each other out after trivia wound up for the night, you would have thought Phryne had suggested throwing the entire tournament so that she could take the barman home to eat him alive. Hugh was resolutely pretending the ceiling was fascinating, and Dot had developed a sudden unaccountable interest in the menu for the cocktails that she didn't actually drink. She had turned it over three times, and they were still no closer to a resolution. But oddly, Mac hadn't given whatever secret signal to Phryne that would have made her stop. She seemed to be acting insouciant for the pure hell of it.

“It was just something that occurred to me, “ Miss Fisher insisted, “no ulterior motives.” Her voice, usually so level, had taken a quarter-octave jump.

“There are any number of films out,” Jack tried, a surprisingly pleading note to his voice. "It wouldn't have to be an epic meeting of minds, just two people enjoying each other's company at the cinema." But Mac was unmoved.

“I don’t have the patience to sit through an arthouse flick,” Mac said. “And don’t even start with me on the horror movies that are out right now.”

“We could go to Hooters,” Rosie suggested, her expression unreadable.

“No thanks,” Mac replied, equally dryly. “I don’t like wings.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Dot had lost her patience. “Here!” She slapped down a paper menu she had produced from her purse. “Thai food. You both like pho, and this place is the best. They have an award-winning craft beer selection, and there’s a used bookstore next door where you can wait for your table. One by one, the jaws of the others at the table began to drop, but she paid no notice. “Dr. Mac, I know you have early rounds on Tuesday, so make it next Tuesday night, and Rosie will have time for me to mend her skirt, which she will want to wear in case things go well and you two go dancing afterwards. Jack already has it in his car anyway, and the stain on it is only a milk protein stain, so an hour of sunlight or so should get it right out, and in any case, the lights would be low enough it wouldn’t be noticeable.” Rosie blinked, gobsmacked. “Furthermore, there’s a cabstand catty corner from the tea shop where you both love the pu’erh with lemon, in case either of you gets cold feet about the Uber driver or each other, and I happen to know,” she paused for a final breath, “that the band playing at the club nearest the restaurant, Another Mellow Winter, is a particular favorite of both of yours, so don’t try to snow me that you wouldn’t have anything to talk about at dinner.” Rosie and Mac looked at each other, and then at Dot, and nodded mutely before breaking into nearly-identical grins. Rosie’s hand crept out tentatively, and met Mac’s with a squeeze.

"Another Mellow Winter? You too?" Rosie whispered, and Mac gave her a soft shrugging smile. Hugh was looking at Dot with an expression of utterly devoted astonishment which resembled that of a Labrador Retriever that had been shown a magic trick.

“Dottie, how did you know all that?” He finally stammered. She shrugged.

“I pay attention.” Dot pulled her water towards herself and took a long sip. “Are we going to order? I’d like to try the fried ravioli.” She stood the menu up in front of her face to hide the fact that her ears were suddenly turning pink.

“D- Dottie, would you want to go to the Gala with me? As…as my fri- co-wor- partn- girlfriend?” Dot beamed and nodded yes. Behind her, where Hugh couldn't see, Mac handed a bill to Phryne.

"Did you two talk?" Mac looked piercingly at Jack, and he swallowed reflexively. Whatever his face said, it must have been enough. Dot, her head on Hugh's shoulder, reached out a hand as well. Rosie produced her own bill, which dropped into Dot's palm with a flutter. "A pair of cynics, us," Mac said, looking Rosie in the eyes. Rosie smiled.

"Only sometimes."

Team Pub Meds was thoroughly trounced by team Nerds of a Feather that night, and neither Jack, Hugh, nor Rosie found they minded in the slightest.

**Author's Note:**

> The song Jack is humming, in case anyone is interested, is Ed Sheeran's Tenerife Sea. Poor guy has it bad :)


End file.
